Automated prevention of failure in complex and large systems: fighting fire with fire
Dr. Behzad Bordbar, School of Computer Science, University of Birmingham, UK
Our daily activities are heavily dependent on correct functioning of systems that support shopping, banking, manufacturing, communication and social networking. These systems are often made up of complex and distributed subsystems. Correct functioning of such distributed systems is ensured by imposing locally binding Service Level Agreements (SLAs), end-to-end Quality of Service (QoS) requirements and Policies to ensure correct access control and to safeguard against malicious activities. Violations of the SLAs, QoS statements or Policies are seen as failure. In the current competitive climate with its fear of financial penalties and losing valuable customers, it is crucial identify such failures so that, in near-real-time recover from or, better, prevent them. In some cases, such failures are very costly and may have serious implications. Because of the sheer size, complexity and high volume of interactions, humans cannot carry out discovery and recovery from the failures with sufficient speed. As a result, the only viable solution is to develop software systems that can predict and identify the scenarios leading to failure in (near-)real-time. This talk aims to discuss some of the modern automated approaches to discovery and avoidance of failure in large and complex infrastructures such as Service oriented Architectures and Cloud.
Human-Centric Computing to Enable and Support a Prosperous Society
Mr. Tatsuo Tomita, President, Fujitsu Laboratories Ltd.
Tatsuo Tomita is President and Representative Director of Fujitsu Laboratories Limited, the main R&D organization for Fujitsu Limited, a leading provider of information and communication technology (ICT)-based business solutions for the global marketplace. Mr. Tomita was appointed President of Fujitsu Laboratories in April 2010, which in addition to multiple locations in Japan, has a global network of R&D sites in the U.S., U.K., and China. The Fujitsu Laboratories Group also engages in numerous joint research and development collaborations worldwide with reputable global universities and other research entities.
Mr. Tomita received a Bachelor of Science (B.S.) degree in science from the University of Tokyo in 1972, and joined Fujitsu Limited in 1973. Since then, prior to his appointment as President of Fujitsu Laboratories, he held various senior management positions in computer-related groups during his career spanning approximately 32 years at Fujitsu Limited, prior to his appointment as President of Fujitsu Laboratories. In 2005, he served as Corporate Vice President and President, Mobile Phones Business Unit. In 2007, he was named Corporate Senior Vice President and President, System Products Business Group. In 2008, he became a Member of the Board, and Corporate Senior Executive Vice President in charge of Fujitsu's Product Business Group.
His highlight accomplishments during his career thus far have been wide-ranging, starting from shortly after he joined Fujitsu, when he conducted architectural design and development of equipment that enabled bit memory-free creation of animation images, at a time when bit memory was costly - this led to shipment of large-scale equipment employing 200 printed circuit boards, which were utilized for broadcasting. After bit memory became more economical, he focused on the development of multi-purpose graphic displays, and led the determination of Fujitsu's graphic data structure and realization of internal standardization. Later, Mr. Tomita was involved in the development of workstations (WS), when engineering workstations from various manufacturers began to be introduced, and his efforts largely enabled the realization of multi-windows and incorporation of error checking and correcting (ECC), high-quality features which were previously unfeasible with personal computers and engineering workstations that were available prior to that time.
He was also involved in the development of UNIX servers and PC servers - in the era when mainframes were in their heyday, for UNIX servers he drove Fujitsu's efforts that led to larger-scale servers based on symmetric multiprocessing (SMP) architecture, which later paved the way for Fujitsu's open-architecture business in this field.
In 2004, Mr. Tomita joined Fujitsu's mobile phone business unit, which was facing an extremely harsh business environment at that time. He implemented scientific approaches to improving product quality and dramatically transformed product development techniques, and also strengthened related marketing divisions, shifting toward a focus on design and user-friendliness. In 2005, became President of the Mobile Phones Business unit, and in just a year was able to turn around the formerly loss-incurring unit into a profitable business, and was promoted to Corporate Vice President in autumn of 2005.
In 2008, Mr. Tomita was promoted to Corporate Senior Executive Vice President and became head of Fujitsu's products division, and drove Fujitsu's new business strategies and R&D of mandatory technologies for Fujitsu leading into the Cloud Era.
In April 2010, upon his appointment as President of Fujitsu Laboratories Limited, Tatsuo Tomita leveraged his extensive product development experience gained during his career at Fujitsu Limited, and since then has been striving to transform Fujitsu Laboratories' activities so that its structure and initiatives can drive the future business of the Fujitsu Group. He proactively engages in external interfacings and exchanges with numerous external stakeholders, including with the media through press interviews, as a keynote speaker and panelist at major global technology and business events, to assertively promote the value of the human-centric computing initiatives that Fujitsu continues to drive and move forward with. His industry-wide activities in Japan include the following: member of the Sub-Committee on Planning, Committee on Industrial Technology of the Keidanren of Japan, Committee Member of the Council on Competitiveness-Nippon (COCN), a member of the Steering Board for the Tsukuba Innovation Arena (TIA) of Japan.